This being “Hobbit Week” (or rather, an extension of “Hobbit Day”, which is generally celebrated on September 22, believed to be the day on which both Bilbo Baggins of the Shire, and Frodo Baggins, his nephew – the central heroes of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, respectively […]
Joseph Campbell had a theory about heroes. In his classic seminal work, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell discusses the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies. The hero, according to Campbell follows the same path or, ‘heroic journey’ : A hero ventures forth from the world […]
It’s a difficult task, narrowing down the novels that have impacted your life into a small, somewhat abstract list. For many of us, reading a novel, a well written novel, is more than a task set to those merely interested in reading a good book. The novels in this […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.